Station 4: Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem

There followed after Jesus a great multitude of the people, and among them were women who bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning to them said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.”

Overpopulation & the Suffering of Children

Where do we see the effects of overpopulation, the dread specter of children suffering from war, starvation, poverty? Bosnia; Somalia, the Sudan, Mozambique; Belfast, Ireland; Bangladeshi children; urban street children In India and El Salvador, Thailand, Rumania, Hong Kong, San Salvador, Lima, Rio De Janeiro, St. Louis, New York, and on and on and on.

“Children are the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population living below the poverty line… 143 million poor children in U.S.; 5 million go hungry; 8 million lack health care of any kind.” “The slow, chronic violence of poverty takes an American child’s life every 53 minutes; guns kill a child every 3 hours and 30 children (a classroom full) every 2 days.”
-Marion Wright Edelmann, the Children’s Defense Fund

Let us Pray:

Teach your faithful people, O God, to mourn the sins of which it is guilty, and to repent and forsake them; that, by your pardoning grace, the results of our Iniquities may not be visited upon our children and our children’s children; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

(All station artwork was produced by members of the Vanderbilt Divinity community from found and reclaimed objects. Liturgy adapted from St. Brendan the Navigator Episcopal Church, Stonington, Maine, 1993. The original version of this liturgy can be found at earthministry.org)